


does it trouble your mind (the way you trouble mine)

by coffeestain



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes' Sadness Backpack, Can be read as established relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 17:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6249619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeestain/pseuds/coffeestain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I remembered and I was terrified to forget again, if something were to happen, it’s all I have so - I wrote everything down. Everything I was sure I got right, everything real, even things I wasn’t quite sure of.  I wrote it all down.”</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>Fluff about Bucky's backpack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	does it trouble your mind (the way you trouble mine)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Sebastians speculation about the Backpack (buckpack?):  
> In his backpack are a dozen notebooks that compose the scattered memories dating back to as far as he can remember, which somewhat piece together a scattered life. [...] He's written things down, for fear of losing his memory again. He was prepared, were something to happen, to walk away with nothing but that backpack, which is why it's the only thing he takes and knowing full well that not everything those pages contain is pretty.

Steve wakes to the rustling of pages.

It’s still pitch black; the room is only illuminated by blaring red numbers from an alarm clock on the bedside table - just after 3 am. For an instant, Steve feels cold dread pooling in his gut - considering all the worst possibilities of who could be rifling through his things in the otherwise empty motel room at such an hour - before he remembers. Bucky. Not weeks ago he’d found him, his arm jammed stuck in a vice, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the backpack he’d carried with him, near helpless, and Steve could pinpoint the exact moment his heart broke for Bucky, were he so inclined. And not days after that, they had to _run_. Drop everything and not look back. As much as Steve wanted to move on, put the past behind them, the fact was there, staring them in the face. Like a shadow, always present: people wanted someone to blame for the Winter Soldier’s crimes and apparently, the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. along with Hydra simply wasn’t enough. So Steve fled, with Bucky in tow. He knew he upset a lot of people in doing so. He’d heard himself be called a coward on national television more than a few times, but as days went on, he found himself caring less and less. He was done being the Man with the Plan, the blind patriot, turning his head to the injustice and mistreatment that was becoming so hard to ignore. _Hell_ , he thought with malice, one day, when it was all too much, _I’m done with being Captain America._ Sure, he’d brought the shield with him on the run, just in case (“Real inconspicuous, pal,” Bucky had joked, and it made Steve’s heart feel light, but to the point), he was more than ready to drop it.

So: not Captain America, but Steve Rogers. Not the Winter Soldier, but Bucky Barnes. Names with less meaning, less weight to them, because god knows they’ve both been carrying those weights for much longer than they ever intended to; were ever meant to. Over just a few weeks of shitty motel room after shitty motel room, Steve can feel Bucky returning - though nowhere near his old personality, there’s the undeniable ghost of James Buchanan Barnes that bleeds through the cracks in his memories. Fills the empty spaces that the Winter Soldier left behind.

In any case, Bucky awake at such an ungodly hour was never good news. At the very best, it meant discomfort, anxiety. Trouble sleeping. At worst, well.

Slowly, barefooted and gentle, Steve pads out to the main room where Bucky sits on the carpeted floor, cross-legged with his back to the front of the aging sofa, carefully leafing through what looks like nearly a dozen notebooks - some looked used, filled to the last page, nearly falling apart at the binds; others new, fresher, with clean, untattered pages. Steve moves quietly so as not to startle his friend, but still communicates his movements clearly, softly. Avoids sudden movements. It’s hit and miss, when they’re like this. Bucky could be anywhere right now, and Steve’s not about to risk a damn thing, not with his best friend and everything he means, everything their very relationship represents, on the line. Taking extra caution, he steps over the books scattered on the floor so as not to even bend any one of their pages - clearly, they are precious to Bucky, which means, Steve decides in that instant, that they are to him, too. He clears a spot next to his friend and sits quietly, just for a perfect, comfortable moment, with nothing but their breathing and soft, barely-there raindrops against the window filling the silence.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Bucky says by way of explanation. Steve gets it. Really, he does - beds are too soft, memories are too loud. For Bucky much more so.

“Can I ask - what are these, Buck?” Steve asks, and doesn’t pick up a single one, not yet. They may be private. Through his peripheral he can see Bucky carefully flip the next page, as if the paper were precious and mishandling it would cause permanent damage.

“It’s what - well, it was what I remembered,” Bucky says after another silent moment. He flips the next page. “Every day, I - I remembered,” he explains, not taking his eyes off of the paper. “I remembered and I was _terrified_ to forget again, if something were to happen, it’s all I have so - I wrote everything down. Everything I was sure I got right, everything real, even things I wasn’t quite sure of. I wrote it all down.”

Steve nods, and takes a minute to look around at the pages filled with Bucky’s scrawled handwriting. “Most of these are full,” He remarks, and it isn’t a question, except it is.

“Yeah,” Bucky says simply, and Steve immediately is filled with guilt for not being able to help Bucky out with all of this when he needed it most. Bucky must be able to sense Steve’s sudden tension, because closes the book in his lap and turns to his friend with a smile that’s barely a smile at all.

“Don’t,” he says, because he knows what’s coming. “Just - I get it, you know?” Of course. They both feel the guilt, and it may be about different things; out of their control, but at least they both know how it feels; how it _eats_ at you. “So it’s alright.”

He wasn’t there for Bucky before, but he can sure as hell start now. “Can I?”

“Of course,” Bucky says. “They’re your memories too.”

Steve picks up one of the notebooks and starts at the beginning.

_**You used to like school.** _

_**The bakery on the corner where you lived used to give you and Steve their day-olds, if the owner (Mrs. Harrison?) was there.** _

_**Becca was born 3 years after you.** _

_**T** _ _**hey used to make you stay awake when they operated on your arm.** _

Steve has to hold back a gag, sometimes.

_**The most important people to you were your mama, Becca and Steve.** _

_**You liked music. Dancing.** _

_**They made you kill children, ~~once~~ twice.** _

“Some of them, I’m not so sure of, like I said,” Bucky says when he feels Steve wince. “I think I wanted you to - help. Confirm what was real, you know?”

Steve nods, and the falter in Bucky’s voice is more than he can take on a good day, so he flips a few pages forward and finds something good to dwell on.

_**You used to work a lot because you’d be damned if Steve had to take on a job with his poor health.** _

“This is real,” Steve says softly. “I felt like an ass, being at home sick when you were out working. Not that I could’ve handled a job. Damn near coughed up a lung every other week.”

_**Steve hated being taken care of but you did it anyways, because he ~~was~~ is your best friend.** _

“This is real,” Bucky whispers, “Whenever you were sick I just wanted to help, but you’re so damn stubborn.” Steve nodded with a grin, and gave Bucky a light shove.

_**They used Captain America against you.** _

“This... this is real, too.” Bucky speaks solemnly. “They - I always thought, you know, you came for me once, so...” He takes a deep breath, gathering the courage to go on, and Steve doesn’t know if he can watch anymore. “But they. When you took the plane down, and everyone thought you, you were dead, they used it. To break me. ‘He’s not coming to help you, no one is.’”

Steve thinks maybe he didn’t know _hate_ till this very moment.

_**Steve used to draw a lot.** _

“I don’t so much, not anymore,” Steve says, barely able to keep his voice from cracking. “Not since the war started. Dunno if I’d still be any good.”

“Sure you would,” Bucky grins, reassuring and warm. “Sure you would. Got natural talent, I always said.”

_**You love Steve most in the world**_.

“This is. This is real.” Bucky says, suddenly fixing his gaze to the floor. “But you knew that, I think.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, threading his flesh fingers through Bucky’s metal ones. “Yeah.”

 

_**You love Steve most in the world.** _

_**And he loves you, too.** _

**Author's Note:**

> prewarstevie.tumblr.com if you're into that sort of thing


End file.
